BlueSky, March 2026 Part 1

The month of March 2026 started as February ended: with the U.S. illegally bombing the hell out of Iran, and Iran firing back. U.S. missiles are now confirmed as destroying a girls' school and killing more than 150 people there with a "double-tap." Despite the killing of their leader, the Iranians have taken advantage of their geography and effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz to oil shipments, which is heading the global economy into something like the 1970s oil crisis. 

As I write this, Trump is trying to coerce or cajole the international allies he has alienated into joining his rogue war to reopen the strait and save American gas prices. Pete Hegseth has been ranting and raving to new levels of excess, even for him, committing war crimes by opening his mouth. 

Earlier in the month, Kristi Noem finally resigned as Homeland Security Secretary, taking Corey Lewandowski with her…along with one of the luxury jets, it appeared. The intensity of the DHS/ICE occupation of the Twin Cities abated, or moved into Greater Minnesota where it was less obvious, but people here remain on edge, and the economy is in great disarray. There are still somewhere between 600 and 1,000 invaders left. 

‪Everything below the line is quoted from the attributed account, and is in reverse chronological order, except some of the timeless images, which I move up or down for better visual balance.‬
‪__‬

I’ve never said this before, but: I do think he’s actually spiraling. The combination of the Iran War and his advancing mortality are pushing him to the edge. His inability to control either is destabilizing him. I just hope he goes before he has a chance to take the rest of us with him.
Leah McElrath

Online gambling will turn "no more than 5% of its users into compulsive gamblers." Current stats show 72 MILLION Americans have a sports-betting app they use at least monthly. That's 3.6 MILLION ruined lives.
Elf M. Sternberg

Sad to see the Ides of March becoming commercialised like this. I really feel like we're losing track of the true spirit of the holiday. It's not about how many knives you can stick in a tyrant all at once, it's about the whole community coming together to stab the tyrant as many times as possible:


A. M. Vincent @vincent.northsky.social

A cycling teammate of mine got knocked down by a car in Oakland and Ryan Coogler pulled his car over to make sure everyone was okay. True story.
Dan Turner @ddt.bsky.social

Do y'all remember before the internet, when people thought the cause of stupidity was the lack of access to information? Yeah, it wasn't that.
Oops @vodkula.bsky.social

"An obscure methodological change lowered a key measure of inflation in January, prompting questions about how government statistical agencies produce and report economic data... The bureau provided no public disclosure of the change...
Rachel Maddow

That's a very long way to say that Trump is cooking the inflation numbers.
Peter Gleick

After Trump took a break from commander-in-chiefing for rounds of golf this weekend, he is only five away from having spent a full 365 days of his two terms on the course. 
Philip Bump

The Department of Homeland Security is an expression of authoritarian intent. Any defense of it is an admission that you think some amount of patrolling non-white people is necessary, which is abhorrent.
LunchCounterPunch @theultrasecret.bsky.social

A modern classic:


Nissa Mitchell

republicans are in charge of everything and they are getting everything theyve ever wanted and doing everything theyve ever wanted and the world is on fire and the global world order is collapsing. is there a correlation? who can say
Andrew Lawrence @ndrew.bsky.social

Pete Hegseth is openly calling on Trump-friendly oligarchs to take over the media while unshackling the military from the "rules of engagement" he hates so much. What he really wants is a world in which horrors like the school bombing don't ever fully come to light.
Greg Sargent

We have the federal government telling news stations to provide favorable coverage of the war or their licenses will be pulled. A truly extraordinary moment. We aren't on the verge of a totalitarian takeover. WE ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF IT. Act like it.
Chris Murphy @chrismurphyct.bsky.social

There's a hauntingly beautiful irony in these morons thinking that carefully crafted American hegemony was actually weak and woke, and they would be the ones who would do Power and Dominance properly, and immediately bringing everything crashing down
Better Things Are Possible @internethippo.bsky.social

If we made the green energy transition this war would be unthinkable and these authoritarians wouldn’t be in power — not in the US, not in Iran, not in Saudi Arabia, not in Russia. Hydrocarbons are killing our freedom and just plain killing us.
Timothy Snyder

Excuse me sir,,,


Adam Serwer

Watching a bunch of giant SUVs trying to maneuver around each other at the grocery store parking lot. Why do we need this. Who's having a good time here
Better Things Are Possible @internethippo.bsky.social

Every now and then, it's worth reminding yourself that every single crisis of Trump 2.0 — the economic downturn, the chaos in our cities, the rising health crisis, the foreign wars — has been a direct result of their own actions. If they'd done nothing at all, they'd be coasting comfortably.
Kevin M. Kruse

I feel like the “are you actually an anti-Zionist or do you just hate Jews” test could easily be also “how do you talk about women that you don’t like”
Samantha Burns @cheesecakechik.bsky.social

More Americans have died in the illegal undeclared Iran War than died during the Afghanistan withdrawal that was portrayed to the American public as a presidency-annulling catastrophe for Joe Biden.
Craig Harrington @craigipedia.bsky.social

Thinking about the circus Republicans invented regarding Benghazi, nails digging into the palm of my fist
rimidar

JFC. Impeach and remove this lawless man, you fools:


Chris Geidner

On this day in 1835, Missouri enacted a law requiring free Black residents to obtain a license to remain in the state. Those who did not faced fines, imprisonment, and expulsion from Missouri.
Equal Justice Initiative

You’re called an expat when you’re rich.
A migrant when you’re poor.
And an illegal when you’re poor and brown.
Matt Gorecki @goreckis.co

1995 is closer to 1965 than to now. You’re welcome
Æ. @aesthr.com

Former US government war crimes lawyer here. Apropos of SecDef's remarks this morning: Denial of quarter—even the declaration of no quarter—is a war crime. And recognized as such by the US Government. From DoD's Manual for Military Commissions.
Brian Finucane

also what an evil idiot. when you do something like that you are saying you want that to be how other countries treat our soldiers. he is betraying the families of the military.
lorin-blue.bsky.social

Hegseth is a sadist. What is he being taught at that church of his?
David Corn

i regret to inform you that with the current trajectory of the right-wing the shelf life of this satire is about 12-18 months:


Craig Johnson

Inside the Department of War are two wolves: 
"We've shut down the Colleges of War because book learnings are woke, gay, and irrelevant to war fighting."
"How come no one told us the Strait is important, there are different kinds of Kurds, Iran is big, and air power historically doesn't win wars?"
Dmitry Grozoubinski @explaintrade.com

If Joe Biden's son-in-law was flying around the Middle East as an unofficial Secretary of State while also working on business deals for his company with the same people he was meeting with on behalf of the US government, I'm pretty sure it would be a bigger story 
scarylawyerguy.bsky.social

it’s unreal how these grown-ass men [the DOGE boys] had no problem destroying untold lives with chatGPT but go crying to a judge when people make fun of them online
Marisa Kabas

Pediatricians are spending half their day debunking podcast grifters. We put an anti-vax activist in charge of HHS. Doctors have to fight snake oil salesmen and the federal government to protect kids. Sabotaging public health to 'own the libs' I guess.
Emerging Crises

Some places mostly serve the neighborhood and it isn't helpful to have an endless stream of motor vehicles running past:


Qagggy!

Minnesotans deserve restitution from ICE's terror campaign. The ICE surge cost Minneapolis $200 million in just one month. That’s before overtime, charter flights, and detention contracts. Taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to subsidize their own trauma.
Ilhan Omar

Someone at the New York Times asked me a couple years ago for an opinion piece on "how to solve the Colorado River water crisis." So I made a nice little write-up on the most obvious answer: charging for water. Once the editorial board saw it, they freaked out and cancelled the piece.
Sarah Taber

When a federal judge (finally) put ICE officers under oath, they admitted that they are given daily detention quotas and rely heavily on a Palantir-supplied AI tool to select targets, without warrants and without enough evidence to obtain one. They simply go into neighborhoods and round people up.
Ambassador Ken Fairfax @portlandken.bsky.social

I feel like it should be more widely unpopular that in the past year we’ve witnessed the creation of an American Stasi required to meet arrest quotas who utilize an AI technology created by a company run by a sweaty raisin of a billionaire who thinks Greta Thunberg is the antichrist.
Seth Cotlar

Happy National Loon Day to all who celebrate:


Joshua Houdek

"Cars are the most absurd means of transport in a city. They are parked 95 per cent of the time. It takes two tonnes to move someone who weighs 70 kilogrammes. And the denser the city, the more absurd it is."
The War on Cars

Capitalism is just basically about getting people addicted to things (gambling, porn, salt/sugar/fat, social media, drugs, etc.) and profiting from it. And our misery continues. Great work everyone. We call drug dealers "criminals" and addiction-sellers "businesses." Seriously, if your business plan is to figure out where people are most vulnerable and then sell them things to feed their addiction, then you're a criminal. Crimes against humanity.
‪Jen Mercieca‬

i am genuinely astonished by how Hegseth speaks exclusively in cliches
jamelle @jamellebouie.net

In the first Trump admin this was how Anthony Scaramucci talked and he was laughed out of his comms job in 11 days. In the second admin this fucking moron has control of the Middle East and really the entire global economy in his hands.
Jean Valjohnfranco @jvjfranco.bsky.social

Fairly clear the GOP is going to try to make the midterms about Muslims. Whipping up hate, starting a war, fear mongering about sleeper cells. The mainstream media is already falling for it. Countdown to NYTimes opeds about the risk of sharia law.
Bryan @bryanformhals.com

:

WORLDWIDE FLAG
Will Stancil

A penchant is when you repeatedly say aloud that you want more pens.
Present & Correct

Epic Fury is so well named. “It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
Patrick Chovanec

The guy who bankrupted casinos has caused the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market. The team that accidentally invited a reporter to a top secret military discussion was taken by surprise when the Iranians closed the Strait of Hormuz.
Mark Jacob

Why is every tech ceo the villain from the Lorax
Adam Serwer

Imagine if anthropologists visited a remote village with no grocery store and one restaurant that only served hamburgers and then concluded based on their observations that the villagers prefer hamburgers. That's essentially the discourse surrounding Americans and their relationship to cars.
Doug Gordon @brooklynspoke.bsky.social

Spotted this on a pole behind independence hall. I recently saw someone say they found collage to be the best way to work through things and I didn’t really see it at the time but


@milfparade.bsky.social

A striking feature of Trump and his team is: they somehow imagine a world in which they are the only actors, only ones with power, and whether it's Tehran or Minneapolis are surprised when it turns out others do. There are many kinds of power and many nations with power.
Rebecca Solnit

the stink of gender resentment coming off Silicon Valley has been obvious for a while. these men hate women because they hate being told no.
BeijingPalmer

it took just over a year to get from "I'll lower costs on day one" to "I'm raising prices and it's good, actually"
Aaron Rupar

I absolutely believe that Trump's success since 2015 signals the inevitability of Streamer Politicians and of course Streamer Presidents. Essentially no one in that category can be trusted to understand, say, bombing Iran has an XX% chance of catalyzing a global depression. Maybe this has always been true, but it's clear one of the biggest problems we face in the 21st century is: The Venn diagram of "people who understand material plenty isn't magic but instead depends on a whole world of logistics" and "people with political charisma" has a vanishingly small center.
@slothropsmap.bsky.social

Show me one person on a bike rolling through a stop sign and I’ll show you 100 drivers speeding in an elementary school zone.
Tom Flood


rain-singer.bsky.social

Trump has tremendous difficulty with principled people (even if as with the Iranian regime, the principles are bad). He assumes everyone is a transactional fraud like him. Works well with rich Americans and poorly with idealists of any stripe
Adam Serwer

Driver: 30km/hr is way too slow for our roads!
Also driver: hey cyclist slow down you’re going 20km/hr - You could kill someone!
Tom Flood

Big Tech and Big Media donated some $63 million to a Trump-aligned nonprofit that was set up to help finance Trump's presidential library. Now the nonprofit has disappeared and with it the money. Three guesses on where it's gone.
Tim Karr

I knew that the Department of War shot a missile into a school and killed 175 civilians, mostly children. This is learned today: Secretary of War Hegseth had cut the teams assigned to prevent such tragedies by 90%.
Aaron Sojourner
 

MC Squared

we remain firmly on track for 'republican president leaves the country an omnishambles, next democratic president is punished for not cleaning it up fast enough'
Micah @rincewind.run

Omnishambles is the new polycrisis.
Ben Goldfarb

Erika Kirk has been appointed to the Air Force Academy’s Board of Visitors. Her listed experience includes real estate, modeling, and a Bible-based streetwear brand. 
Daily Kos

Markwayne Mullen, Trump's new DHS Secretary pick, is one of Congress' most active stock traders. He reportedly entered Congress with $12M and has reportedly grown his wealth to $65M. He's already making shady deals — if he's confirmed, the conflicts of interest can only grow.
Public Citizen

I get almost as many comments about how ugly or fat I am on my workout posts as I did on my posts before I started lifting. I’m not asking for sympathy. I just want to remind Black women that the point isn’t if we are pretty or skinny or not. The point is they want us to not exist.
Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social

The US has extremely low fuel taxes compared to other countries. The federal gas tax hasn't been raised since 1993. People justify not investing in biking and walking infrastructure because the US is a "users-pay" transportation system. When we've already been subsidizing drivers for decades
Ken McLeod

What if I told you that Transportation is the highest-polluting sector of the American economy? Now what if I told you that ~100% of that is from oil? Now what if I further told you that we can do something about it but mostly aren't even trying?
David Weiskopf

‘Hey’ came before ‘hi,’ and ‘hi' came before ‘hello.’
‘Hi’ is most likely a variant of ‘hey.’
‘Hello’ is not related to either.
Goodbye.
Merriam-Webster

nashville tire service, nashville, tennessee, 1980:


old roadside pics

One fossil fuel crisis costs the UK more than shifting to net zero by 2050. And how many more such crises can we expect in the next 24 years? A great example of how the proper temporal frame clarifies costs and benefits
Thomas Hale

If you're not shocked by the fraction of city space taken up by car parking, you're not paying attention.
David Ho

The stupidity is endless, isn’t it. Iran now holds the world energy economy to ransom and our idiot government didn’t prepare for that at all. And they were going to replace the terrible leader, and they replaced him with a younger version of him who hates us more because Trump killed his family.
Tom Coates

"The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" but everyone agrees it's fine to continue the atrocity as long as the child is trans
Edith @edithcharles.bsky.social

I'm seriously so fucking sick of people using the e-bikers are lazy trope. And even if you *are* able-bodied and use an e-bike, who the fuck cares? Getting somewhere faster and not all sweaty is fantastic.
Gravel Influencer

If these people think Ebikes are lazy, wait until they learn about cars.
Fietser

Randy Fine is one of the most racist members of Congress, and the fact that he is Jewish makes me deeply ashamed. Denouncing this man and his racism should be the lowest of low bars for every Jewish institution in the US.
Joel S. @joelhs.bsky.social

The idea that America isn’t for everyone who wants to be an American is something that makes my blood boil. Posting a photo of yourself as a Congressman smiling next to these words is wicked. It’s antithetical to the concept of America:


Cooper Lund

How much more evidence do we need? The ultra-rich and the governments supporting them will destroy everything for the sake of profit, power and pride. Nothing is precious to them - not human life, not the living world — except their own wealth and status. Our survival depends on resisting them.
George Monbiot

Mandani: Takes care of all NYC residents.
GOP: “He hates America.”
Trump: Iran may kill US citizens, I dunno, shit happens. Where’s my golf club?
GOP: “Is this Jesus?”
Zegs

Who would have guessed that the legal system in America was so fragile that a single crazy president could ignore the whole thing, from the Constitution right down to state laws? Why does the Supreme Court and Congress let this demented moron act like the dictator of a banana republic?
Ashley Zacharias

I’ve been photographing anti-ICE and related yard/window/tree/street signs around Minneapolis. The variety of commercial and especially handmade signs is amazing, as is the urge for people to let their neighbors know they care and are furious in ways big and small. Batch #3:


Wendy @hyssop.bsky.social

On the one-year anniversary of his detention by federal authorities, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and First Lady Rama Duwaji welcomed Mahmoud Khalil, his wife Noor, and their baby boy, Deen, to Gracie Mansion to break the fast together.
Yashar Ali

love how we killed the old, frail anti-nuke ayatollah just to have him replaced with his young, healthy son who wants nukes and who just had his father, mother, wife, and child murdered on the same day by his mortal enemy. surely this will bring peace to the region
doom boy

It's not a productive trend, but with every passing day I think I get more hung up on how massive the contrast was in 2024 and how easy the choice should've been for voters. And I get angrier and angrier about the people who muddied that contrast and the people who chose to vote for *this.*
Alex Schieferdecker

Still crazy that the president’s lawyer spent two days with Ghislaine Maxwell, she “cleared” him of wrongdoing and was almost immediately transferred to a more pleasant prison and nobody in the administration will explain it and the media acts like two large dots are just impossible to connect.
Schooley

I’ve been photographing anti-ICE and related yard/window/tree/street signs around Minneapolis. The variety of commercial and especially handmade signs is amazing, as is the urge for people to let their neighbors know they care and are furious in ways big and small. Batch #4:


Wendy @hyssop.bsky.social

I wonder what percentage of Americans know that the CIA helped overthrow a democracy in Iran in 1953, installing a brutal dictator who tortured and murdered people. Republicans keep citing the 1979 Islamic Revolution as if that was the start of  U.S.-Iran hostilities. Go back 26 years earlier.
Mark Jacob

Now that everyone’s paying attention to global energy markets and effects of faraway events on prices and decision-making, is it a good time to talk about the indirect land use effects of dedicating cropland to biofuel production or nah?
Richard Waite

Just like the Covid crisis switched the entire world to Zoom and work from home, a lasting Iran oil crisis should switch the entire world to electrification. Impeach and remove Donald Trump and use the Defense Production Act to make affordable electric cars and charging systems everywhere.
Eric Holthaus

Also known as "using insider knowledge for war profiteering":


Mrs. Betty Bowers

I don't know if anyone even cares about crime statistics. They go up, need more police. They go down, police are juking the stats, and we still need more police. They hit historic lows, the problem is that people don't FEEL safe.
Jessica Pishko

A consistent theme across the discourse is that people simply do not appreciate the baseline destructiveness and horror of war. The basic tools of military action are things that would be horrific crimes in civilian life. A war crime is an act so egregious  that it stands out against that background. Somehow we never have that conversation honestly before we go to war.
spherical-cow.bsky.social

I feel that every news headline should be "Convicted rapist and internationally wanted war criminal together launch illegal war to bring about armageddon in order to prevent the world from uncovering their global pedophile sex-trafficking ring."
Sigrid Ellis

Every time a woman runs for president I hear that she’s too emotional and unstable to make wartime decisions, unlike the men in charge who make really reasonable decisions like bombing kids to death, starting water wars, and poisoning the entire planet
Kat Tenbarge

Wheel ruts worn into the roads of ancient Pompeii made by the passage of wagons and carts some 2,000+ years ago. A reminder to modern visitors of ancient traffic which flowed through busy Pompeian streets. Photo by me:


Alison Fisk

Americans think nearly half of social media users post toxic/fake content. the actual number is closer to 3-7%. a small group of highly active users produces most of the harmful posts, but the misperception itself makes people feel worse about the state of the U.S 
Rachel Cohen Booth

Wow — as first spotted by @BadFoxGraphics on X, Fox & Friends this morning used *old footage of a previous dignified transfer* to mislead their audience about the fact that Trump wore a baseball cap during the one yesterday
Aaron Rupar

I get yelled at for saying this but for many hundreds of years people went to university not to get diplomas or be employable but because immersion in the humanities was considered foundational to a good life, and school must return to its original purpose: the joy of learning.
Boze the Library Owl @sketchesbyboze.bsky.social

In 2013 Aaron Swartz committed suicide for facing 35 years in prison for mass downloading scientific articles. 13 years later, Meta is almost getting away with an infraction orders of magnitude larger. The law didn't change.
Tiago Peixoto @tiago.skewed.de

What could possibly explain the intensity of Western interest, over the past century and more, in this region?


George Monbiot

I really just can't get into the headspace of people who think:
1) Jesus is coming back in the immediate future
2) He's gonna give us a high five for making the bombs that blew up Bethlehem and give us a pony 
3) So better explode some more shit real good to expedite the process
Starfire’s Deranged Neocon Foreign Policy Podcast @irhottakes.bsky.social

christians looking for jesus in every war we start, every missile we fire, every conquering despot we crown, and never in the one place jesus promised he could be found: among the poor, the starving, the oppressed.
tyler huckabutt @tylerhuckabee.bsky.social

Shout out to everybody else who grew up with very intense rapture anxiety and then now people want it to happen on purpose is a mainstream opinion and not just the weirdos in your church and family. It sucks!
Ophie Dokie

would jesus not be mad if you kill a bunch of people to bring him back. is it okay if its to bring jesus back, i'm not up on all the rules i confess
shaun @shaunvids.bsky.social

Folks...this picture of Linda Hamilton and Bryan Cranston from an episode of MURDER SHE WROTE. I didn't think it was possible for two people to look this 1986:


Bill Smiley @neokefka99.bsky.social

a lot of discussion about how "cosmopolitan" urban dwellers are, but a really under-discussed trend is the homogenization of culture across *rural* areas of the USA — replacement of once-distinct regional cultures with generic "redneck" accent and culture, regional religions with evanglicalism etc
mtsw

every incumbent party on the planet got walloped and Harris/Dems did better than almost all of them. she overperformed in swing states where she campaigned heavily compared to the rest of the country. she absolutely could have run a better campaign (Gaza!) but I don’t know if it would have been enough
Micah @rincewind.run

One of my theories is that lots of us (me included) spend a lot of time thinking about what Harris could have done better because it's more comfortable to think about that than the fact that for tens of millions the moral black hole of Trump is what they explicitly wanted.
Glonzo In Exile

I know it’s not worth it but my god the GOP freakout over the Afghanistan withdrawal compared to how they talk about Iran, what’s it like to have no fixed opinions at all
Dave Levitan

One thing I feel ought to be discussed more is the fact that basically all rural and suburban places in the US are subsidized by cities. They resent cities. They insult cities. They elect politicians who abuse cities. But none of them could survive without cities.
David Roberts @volts.wtf

Anti-Suffragette postcard, ca. 1910s. Happy International Women's Day, bicycle friends!


Cool Bike Art

One aspect of the federal occupation of the Twin Cities and our resistance to it that I find notable is the utter solidarity Indigenous Minnesotans have shown with their immigrant neighbors. Among other things it shows the difference between anti-colonial struggle and being ‘anti-immigration’.
Normies Say ¡Chinga la migra! @soupgoodfood.bsky.social

For those who have forgotten the past 40 years:
Tax cuts for the rich...don’t trickle down
Boosting military spending...doesn’t bring peace
Slashing regulations...doesn’t create jobs
Folks, we’ve seen this all before.
Robert Reich

A good rule of thumb is that a carbon tax of $1 per metric ton of greenhouse gas emissions would raise gasoline prices about 1 cent. So a 43 cent increase in the price of gas is equivalent to a carbon war tax of $43 per metric ton of GHGs.
Costa Samaras

When men's workload is automated, it's genius; when women's workload is automated it's a character flaw and morally questionable.
Joyful Song @jlw779.bsky.social

The word “tattoo” has two distinct meanings, with two distinct etymologies. The first, meaning skin art, comes from Polynesian. The second, meaning a military drumbeat, comes from the Dutch.
Mignon Fogarty @grammargirl.bsky.social

fancy chicken dishes!


Jen Mercieca

The thing about the anti-Christ is, everyone following him is pretty sure he’s the Christ.
Patrick Chovanec

A year-long investigation into the Hyperloop found … “The truth was far simpler, far dumber, and far more prescient: Musk and his lieutenants truly had no idea what they were doing.”
Clive Thompson

At an event last night I said "If the word hope doesn't work for you try, 'Never fucking surrender.'" The word hope seems too sunny to a lot of people, but the heart of it as I'm interested in it is: we make the future in the present, if we show up, and that never surrender part.
Rebecca Solnit

Endlessly grim to me how facile and empty these peoples' visions of the New World Order are; they're tearing up fifty years of international agreements and progress and imperfect stumbling towards the possibility of a better world and all they want out of it is to be a gangster petrostate.
Nathan Goldwag @goldwagnathan.bsky.social

Something that speaks to a sudden decline in our society is the amount of people I’ve seen lately approaching stop signs and then going right through them like “nope, don’t believe in this anymore!”
Brendel @brendelbored.bsky.social

Portrait of Alexander Calder and his family in Paris, 1954:


Stacey Burns @wentrogue.bsky.social

The people who think punk shouldn't be political and the people who think scifi shouldn't be political should all get an island together and never talk to the rest of us ever again
Daddy Rex @katyrex.meatjacker.social

The real insanity isn’t how much oil prices have spiked, it’s that we’re still burning oil for energy.
David Ho

SHOULD THE U.S BLOT OUT THE SUN AND USHER IN AN AGE OF ETERNAL DARKNESS? –Gallup 2/20/26-3/5/26 
NO: 41%
YES: 38% 
UNSURE: 21%
Nathan Goldwag @goldwagnathan.bsky.social

There's one country headed toward "total collapse" and at this point it doesn't seem like it's Iran.
Doug Gordon @brooklynspoke.bsky.social

If other people's children are fair targets in war, then so are yours.
Prisonculture

The Expense:


Tom Flood

A classified report by the National Intelligence Council found that even a large-scale assault on Iran launched by the United States would be unlikely to oust the Islamic republic’s entrenched military and clerical establishment. 
Max Boot

23 year old Ruben Ray Martinez’s last words? “I’m sorry sir.” ICE shot him 3 times and killed him.
Renee Good’s last words? “It’s ok I’m not mad”. 
Alex Pretti’s last words? “Are you ok?”
These are the people DHS calls domestic terrorists. Threats. Aggressors. 
Abolish ICE
Kelly @broadwaybabyto.bsky.social

Cheap oil is not your birthright. Living your life behind the wheel is an utter waste. Your car is your master.
MaryMM

Congrats to everyone who voted for Trump and a Republican Congress "for the economy." This is what you get, a sputtering job creation engine that can't make progress like before and keeps rolling backwards:


Max Kennerly

Imagine all the cool, fast trains we could have with the billions we spend on bombs.
Katelyn Burns

the Austin mass shooter was a Tesla employee who assaulted a coworker during a company-allowed prayer break late last year. the company refused to give the victim her assailant's name so she could press charges, and he went on to become a mass shooter
e.w. niedermeyer

ICE agents trained to lie all the time assume everyone is lying all the time.
Robert Stribley @stribs.bsky.social

One of the best of all time. “You’re not stuck in traffic. You ARE traffic.” Wish we had come up with that one:


Urban Truth Collective

I am not trying to do the whole "everything's a distraction" thing, but the DOJ holding onto specific allegations about Trump assaulting a minor and releasing them after a war against Iran has taken center stage is, uh... noteworthy timing.
Puff the Magic Hater @mskellymhayes.bsky.social

this is not incidental! to be a liberal/pluralist of any kind requires accepting that other people will see things differently than you do and that you have no sanctified monopoly on the One Truth. this is what illiberals hate about liberalism. it’s the starting point for many.\
elias isquith

Logging on to tell you that the Mayo Clinic's annual profit is equal to Hennepin County Medical Center's entire operating revenue. However can we find the money to save our bedrock safety net hospital? 
Eric Harris Bernstein

move slow and repair things
George @hannahtempler.com

it's insane that my country's current position is that, if we don't like the leader of a sovereign nation, not only do we get to kill them we get to pick their successor
post malone ergo propter malone @proptermalone.bsky.social

“War-a-Lago” By Barry Blitt at The New Yorker:


Carl Quintanilla

"I sexually exploited a now-dead employee and also I've got God on speed-dial and he always does what I want" is quite the self-portrait. Of right-wing Christianity. And evangelical entitlement. And then he stepped down, realizing that even if his sock-puppet God obediently forgave him, the voters might not.
Rebecca Solnit

Wars are extremely hard things to justify. It is intrinsic to what they are that they tend to death, destruction, and misery. Given this and some knowledge of history, one's default attitude towards powerful people purporting to do the world some great benefit by war should be extreme scepticism.
lastpositivist.bsky.social

unembarrassed enthusiasm about learning new things is genuinely the best way to live
Naomi Alderman

I remember Republicans telling me that it's absurd to call Trump a Nazi because he has no interest in initiating wars of conquest.
Patrick Chovanec

"Millennial Nazi whose only way to understand the world comes from a pastiche of blockbuster films and video games," is really becoming a defining aesthetic of our era.
Ned Richardson-Little @historyned.bsky.social


Anton Bitel @antbit.projectedfigures.com

one google data center in virginia 
two million gallons of water per day
information only released under court order and risk of contempt
jae holzman @jael.bsky.social

They know that many people in the US will accept the killing of civilians overseas but will draw the line at high gas prices.
Prisonculture

It's been so common for ICE to not return personal items of folks they abducted and detained that I believe there is either some sort of memo or expectation shared among agents to purposely discard or steal from people detained. 
Nate Pentz

The 1973 oil embargo was seismic event that sent shocks through the US economic, political, and social infrastructure. It contributed to the demise of the domestic auto industry, the beginning of the homelessness epidemic, and the rise of neoliberalism. This could be bigger.
Leah McElrath

Kristi Noem going out praising herself for her courageous public service when all she did was steal our money and lie to America and brutalize the vulnerable and screw her boyfriend is pretty much the exit from DHS I expected of her. It is very important she eventually go to prison
Seth Abramson

Appreciate the clarity:


Maladroithe

private equity reading this like "I smell an opportunity to improve operational efficiency!"
e.w. niedermeyer

"Autonomous Vehicles almost by definition lower the friction and costs associated with driving ... And we already know, from the last century-plus of experience in the US, what happens when we make driving easier: We will get more of it. And more concrete and asphalt infrastructure to accommodate it." 
Urban Truth Collective

ICE has arrested and detained a Nashville journalist who reported stories critical of ICE. She’s married to a U.S. citizen and has been seeking asylum here after fleeing death threats in Colombia because of her journalism there. They’ve already sent her to Louisiana.
Radley Balko

someone was saying they thought maple syrup just came out of the tree, and it’s funny because we have a story about this in ojibwe. like, the syrup used to come out that way but people got lazy and fat so the creator thinned it out into sap so we wouldn’t take it for granted
ashley fairbanks @ziibiing.com

I can't think of anyone in this administration whom I don't want fired.
David Ho

If war crimes Barbie does get fired it’s gonna be because she violated the most important part of the oath to the mad king: never center yourself more than you center him.
Tinman 2.0 contre la caste @bcmfietser.bsky.social

Historian here, history first time as tragedy the second time as farce:


Manisha Sinha @profmsinha.bsky.social

WTF even IS "autopen"? Is this just some bullshit notion that the Right created, and media organizations just use the word without challenge? I swear, I'm so tired of being subjected to projection fantasies of the Right while real people are getting killed and disappeared.
Bob Alberti @a1batross.bsky.social

Conservatives think their rights are violated when they simply notice other people. Their ideology is incompatible with community.
Red sky at night

It’ll still be the Stephen Miller DHS, who cares who the sock puppet is
Asawin Suebsaeng @swin24.bsky.social

Remind me: when you bomb an elementary school, lure the survivors into a false sense of safety, and then bomb the survivors, leaving behind dozens and dozens of dead school children... are you the good guys?
David Roberts @volts.wtf

A lot of people say AI isn't very good for the world and its outputs are routinely unreliable, but these haters fail to see how it's revolutionizing how we incinerate schoolchildren.
Tim Onion @bencollins.bsky.social

Happy World Book Day!


Matchbloc

the running theme of like 3/4ths of the content on my feed right now is just ten different examples of Kristi Noem being juuuuuust smart enough to answer "how dare you" instead of "no" when she's lying
Claire Willett

"retail theft" is such a spectacular lie of post-pandemic reality-creation. it gave cover for companies to expand the surveillance state, raise their prices, and close stores in slightly less profitable areas, conveniently turning the actual solution (hire more employees) into a total non sequitur
sarah zedig @hmsnofun.bsky.social

When will [X climate impact] reach a tipping point? “We can say 20 to 30 years. It’s enough time that any normal politician can think: ‘Not my problem,’ but it’s not enough time for someone who’s aged any less than 60 to ignore it.” The temporal paradox of climate breakdown
Dr Charlie Gardner

We went from making up reasons like "weapons of mass destruction" to you know what, fuck it we don't need to even lie, the president "had a feeling" that they pose a threat so we just bomb them so we can. A country doing this can't expect peace inside.
Timnit Gebru

We identified 12 shootings by federal agents that led to the deaths or injuries of citizens and immigrants since Sept. Nearly every time, the Trump admin blamed the injured and dead. Experts say this apparent lack of accountability demands that local authorities step up to investigate federal agents.
ProPublica

Seen today in my neighborhood:


Naomi Kritzer

At some point you realize the actual difference between human civilization and everything else is paperwork and thus the bureaucrat really is the most important person.
Airship Chronos

Anyone saying Iran is a bunch of "crazed religious fanatics" should give Pete Hegseth a quick listen.
Tea Pain

Modern Republican position is that the Redcoats acted properly at the Boston Massacre
Avocadoplex

The design of the Constitution divided war-making authority between Congress and the executive to prevent a president to take the country to war by themselves for any petty or self-serving reason. You know, like a king would. 
Adam Serwer

Remember: nothing is allowed to happen in the USA unless it makes a wealthy person even wealthier right away. Healthcare, the arts, firefighting, science, whatever — if a rich white man isn't seeing a quarterly profit from it, there's absolutely no point in doing it.
Bob Alberti @a1batross.bsky.social

it's funny how fast criticism of "virtue signaling" degenerated into just despising virtue outright
ponder @ponder.ooo

Nothing says Urban Village like 8 stories of building, 6’ of sidewalk, 4’ of plantings, and 6 lanes of Rainier:


pwalchtaylor.bsky.social

Hello police I heard about your policy to intervene in my time of need. Sorry we can only intervene in cases where we see it happening, and that won't be possible because we have another policy that says we have to avert our eyes.
Wedge LIVE!™

This cartoonishly childish Hegseth persona is an insult to the American military, the American people, the Iranian people, and just about everybody affected by this war. It is absolutely incredible, in the literal sense, that this man is at the hinge of the chain of command in this spiraling war.
Elizabeth N. Saunders

I think most Americans assume that there IS a legal path to citizenship that a lot of undocumented people simply don’t want to go through, and I think now people are discovering that there isn’t! And they think there should be.
Sarah @harrietvane.bsky.social

Polymarket has created a betting market on the use of nuclear weapons. Everyone involved in this should be put in prison for life.
Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net

Every single aspect of this Iran war is the stupidest fucking thing ever, and completely on brand for Trump. This is the sort of thing many people have been worried he was going to do ever since he got elected the first time. The guardrails held him back then but they're gone now.
J. Sam Drolet

ABOLISH ICE:


Sean Lim 

yeah the damage a single bad billionaire can do wildly outstrips any positive impact even a theoretically ideal billionaire can have. more, I think that the kind of person you need to be to become a billionaire tends to select for the worst outcomes in all but the rarest of cases
Micah @rincewind.run

On this day in 1921, a white lynch mob hunting a Black man saw a different Black man walking down a road and killed him instead. The mob claimed mistaken identity and faced no punishment.
Equal Justice Initiative

Sometimes I think about the gazillions of dollars we spend on always being ready to murder people around the world at a moment's notice while slashing food stamps and school budgets. And then I think about all the times I've been told that pacifism is "unrealistic."
Sam Bergman @violanorth.bsky.social

What just happened in Dallas County [on election day] is one of the most blatant voter suppression operations I've ever seen—and it happened in a *primary*. In March. Imagine November.
Eliza Orlins

We need more moral leadership in this country, and less political leadership. I don't mean preachers. I mean people who serve as a quiet example in our everyday lives, of what doing the right thing looks like.
Patrick Chovanec

We need more murals by Chuck U:


snackerü

I think it is important to understand that this war can't be argued against in the rational terms many people are trying to understand and navigate it. This is a war started to kick off the apocalypse. Every decision and action should be viewed through that lens.
Sarah Tuttle @niais.bsky.social

My opinion: Jamelle Bouie is the best national political columnist in America. This doesn’t mean he is always right or you always need to agree with him. But he consistently elevates the form. Conservatives and liberals who make deranged personal attacks on him just make themselves look bad.
Jonathan Ladd

The US is forever proclaiming that this or that region will be better off without this or that bad guy, all the while drenching those regions in bombs, fire, and the ashes of innocents. I don't want Congressional authorization for any of that; I want mass realization of it.
LunchCounterPunch @theultrasecret.bsky.social

I'm rapidly coming around to the position that I don't trust anyone who wants to outsource their humanity, call me a Luddite, go ahead
Sarah Goodyear

The resemblance to David Ellison is still uncanny:


Steve M. @stevemnomoremister.bsky.social

American traffic "engineers" would learn more from walking and biking to get a sense of how safe streets feel, than looking at statistics. If everyone else avoids a street because drivers are overwhelmingly dangerous, and thereby avoids being hit, that does not make it safe.
Politics of Cars @thismachinekillsfascists.bike

I’m a broken record on this but Trump’s entire plan was clearly “kick them in the face, collect praise from Twitter, walk away.” From his perspective it’s always worked before. It seemingly never occurred to them that they may not be able to walk away.
Will Stancil

As it is with our clothing, so it is with our names. We can have trans rights, bodily autonomy, gender nonconformity, and freedom of expression, or we can have none of these things. There’s no third option.
Angus Johnston

As the case of "JD" Vance illustrates, it's not an act that is being treated as a crime. It is a category of people who are being treated as a crime.
Nothings Monstered

Wearing my coping hoodie:


David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social

sometimes I just have to stop and think, wait. did I really see a video of RFK working out and then taking a cold plunge in his blue jeans while drinking raw milk? with kid rock?? did trump really go off on a two minute tangent about his fucking drapes in the middle of a presser about the war?
Tom Tomorrow

People will live in neighborhoods where all the houses are over $600k, send their kids to private schools, primarily socialize with other moderately wealthy people... and then tell a lefty person who makes $48k on blue sky that they live in a bubble.
Wes Burdine

whether war, vaccines, or critical infrastructure there is contingent of the right that seems to believe that their security from the worst things that happen is some kind of metaphysical principle rather than the result of specific historical processes that could've gone otherwise and still could
Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò

Rich white people have a religious faith that the world is supposed to work for them without them bothering to understand how the world works.
Carl Nyberg

Calling AI "slop" has been one of the most effective instances of the public rebranding a product and it pisses them off:


Steven Santos

you can have a dinner that celebrates the First Amendment or a dinner that features Donald Trump but you cannot have both
Jamison Foser

who you gonna believe, 30 or 40 women that all independently have the same story, or 1 or 2 horrible men?
Mind Goblin @slartibartfast34.bsky.social

The top 1% in America now hoard $55.8 trillion — more than the GDP of the United States and China combined.
More Perfect Union

The Roberts Court's position is that if you deserved justice or due process you would be rich.
Adam Serwer

the media-war machine was at peak performance during the first gulf war under hw bush and was firing on all cannons from 9/11 to the end of 2006. the press didn't want to hear about peacenik hippies opposing war. they wanted their war porn and bush/cheney gave it to them like the best drug dealers.
Oliver Willis

From the crew at Powderhorn Park in Minneapolis on Saturday! 


Matt McNeil Show

The reason administrations since Carter left the Iran regime in place was an adversarial but contained stable state was preferable to a failed one in that region especially. Otherwise you’ve got an inferno that stretches from Turkey to the Gulf to the Caucasus to Pakistan/Afghanistan.
Andrew Otis Weiss @thatweissguy.bsky.social

The president who used AI to make a video of himself as a crowned fighter pilot bombing the American people with shit wants you to trust him with unlimited access to AI-operated killing machines that operate without human supervision and that are inherently unreliable. ...
Peter Norton

About every 57k miles driven by Musk’s robotaxis, one gets into a wreck. That’s four times the rate of humans.
dell cameron

“Rabbit Rabbit.” Iranian tile with two rabbits, two snakes and a tortoise:


Dianne Sherman

For my entire life, one of the core principles of global relations, so simple that a 10yo could grasp it, has been "just make sure that a region-consuming war doesn't pop off in the Middle East." And now we've deliberately started one, just for funsies.
Sam Bergman @violanorth.bsky.social

Bicycle parking takes parking space away from one vehicle. Vehicle parking takes living space from hundreds of people. One is more controversial than the other.
Natalia Barbour

I’m actually not sure we can come back from “prediction markets for war crimes,” as a society. I think this might be it for us.
Julia Carrie Wong @joolia.bsky.social

A big part of the authoritarian playbook is war. War takes over the news. War blots out criticism. War divides a nation’s people, subjecting those against it to being called unpatriotic. War grants leaders all sorts of emergency powers. War consumes everything else. We mustn’t let this war do so.
Robert Reich

People will argue you need nukes to deter aggression, but having allies willing to defend you works just as well, if not better. This is why multinational alliances/federations/unions are better (and probably cheaper) than weapons of mass destruction.
The Alternate Historian

If you think empathy is a bad thing, you’re almost certainly a bad person.
Brent Toderian

Timeless:


Urban Truth Collective

It just can’t be said enough that for months the federal government waged war on the people of Minnesota, kidnapping them off the streets, driving families into hiding, and killing 2 of people. And if you cannot call that out or state that clearly, you’re not one of us. You’re one of them.
Wes Burdine